Summary-7

computer-aid

In the beginning we watched ‘Modern Times’ by Charlie Chaplin.
CSCW: computer-supported cooperative work
*Winograd and Flores
–the language/action perspective of work
–a diagram of a conversation for action

key-point in this topic was: “every digital media technology has an architecture using diagrams to compare physical architectures with digital architectures”

Agre
–the surveillance model
–architectures of surveillance
–the capture model & its relation to Winograd and Flores
CSCW
•computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is a field of research and design. (ex: CAD/CAM, ABB Powerwall, Drug Design)
–researchers in this field investigate how people work together in groups, and design computer-systems and networks to enable or facilitate group work.
–CSCW is considered to a part of a larger field known as CHI or HCI: human-computer interaction (HCI) design, evaluation, implementation, and study of interactive computing systems for human use.
–Practitioners include Lucy Suchman, Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores (as well as several hundred others in university and corporate research laboratories).

Winograd and Flores
•Winograd and Flores present a methodology for CSCW analysis and design. This methodology is commonly known as the “language/action” perspective.
design as conversation construction
•any organization is constituted as a network of recurrent conversations (ex: issue, topic, theme…)
•conversations are linked in regular patterns of triggering and breakdown (ex: next issues…)
•in creating tools we are designing new conversations and connections (ex: ways, methods, rules…)
•computers are a tool for conducting the network of conversations (ex: how-to, clues ….)
Winograd and Flores: model of conversation
•conversations are sequences of actions because by saying things people are understood to be doing things;

Some questions
What are our patterns of triggering and breakdown? --> linking t to t

How do we use computers and networks to conduct this network of conversations? --> creating tools

What new media technologies might be designed to create new conversations and connections? --> blogs …

Winograd & Flores’ recurrent networks of conversation
capture (in comparison with surveillance)
•linguistic metaphors instead of visual metaphors
•instrumentation and reorganization of activities rather than a non-disruptive data collection
•organization using categories of connected activities (cf. assembly lines) instead of organization by “territories” (e.g., private space versus work space)
•local storage and use of captured data versus centrally organized monitoring
•the driving aims are not necessarily political, but philosophical/market driven
five stage cycle of grammars of action
•analysis
•articulation
•imposition
•instrumentation
•elaboration

political economy of capture
•“...by imposing a mathematically precise form upon previously unformalized activities, capture standardizes those activities and their component elements and thereby prepares them for an eventual transition to market-based relationships.